Iron Man

The Good
Well, it does feature the voice talents of Robert Downey Jr. (which is all that its not cracked up to be) and does feature Terrence Howard and Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" is played during the first level so at least somebody who loves the song can enjoy it.

The controls are actually quite easy to learn, especially when it comes to flight and hover. At first it is a little dicey, but once you get used to it, it's actually quite enjoyable. There is one thing I am thankful for though, after the first stage you have training modes that are unavoidable and unnecessary. One of these exercises is flying through rings mid-air, a la Superman 64, but luckily it seems they have learned not to do the same. True you still have to fly through them, but there is no time limit and if you miss one you can turn right around and go through it backwards instead of having to make a U-turn and do it again.

The Bad
Well, there is a lot of terrible things about this game. It didn't feature Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges, which were the smartest of them and decided not to waste time on this (which is sad since Bridges character in the film made me think of a Bizarro version of The Dude from the The Big Lebowski, but the game's version gives me the impression of a cheap rip-off of Lex Luthor).

True, it does feature Robert Downey Jr., but it just seemed like he was messed up when he did this game. His speech in the game sounded slurred, plus he seemed more of an A-hole in the game than in the movie, I actually hated playing him just for the smart ass attitude of him.

I do have to admit the CGI for the cinemas were nice, but bad lip-synching and horrible wooden acting just ruined it. You can almost imagine the actors standing at a podium, looking at their watch waiting to get out of it. It would have been nice if they inter spliced footage from the movie into it, which would have helped it out.

The gameplay actually is repetitive and boring: flying around, shooting repulsor rays, machine guns and rockets at a wave of the same enemy over and over. You can punch them and make them fly back 50 feet, but that gets boring after a while. Which reminds me, in the first level in the cave, you can punch the bad guys, but they only fly about 2 inches and float in mid-air for a second then fall...what the hell?

Plus, when you look at the back of the cover, you get an idea of what it would be like. When I read it, it sounded like you can overturn enemy humvees (which looks like a cardboard cutout) and fly high up in the clouds and fight enemy helicopters and jets, but when you fly up too high, you hit and invisible ceiling preventing you from going any higher and you can only turn over one humvee.

The story of the game is far different from the movie, it doesn't even explain how you end up in the cave, it completely ignores it, plus the enemy you are fighting is called the Maggia, which is mentioned throughout the comic books, but this one has it where they are attacking Stark since they stopped doing business with them, so my first thought is that they kidnapped Stark at the beginning, but then you find out The Ten Rings exist, but doesn't fully explain if they kidnapped Stark or that....(Oh man, I have to stop, my head is starting to pound). There are bosses scattered in the stages, ranging from giant hovercrafts which had nothing to do with the film, just thrown in to fill in the game.

The upgrading of weapons and armor sucks, the only way to upgrade is to constantly use the features over and over, instead of buying them or through some other system, so inevitably the repulsor is the first thing to upgrade since it will be used more often, but then you have to switch between the operating systems, making yourself vulnerable one way or the other. Plus, the way you can switch extra power to weapons, flight and armor is neat, but it takes forever to switch over and you can forget about it at times.

The Bottom Line
If this game was made to promote the movie, it failed extremely miserably. The gameplay, the bad acting, even Downey Jrs. slurred acting really ruined the experience for me. This game isn't even worth a rental, which is ironically how I got to experience this crap-tacular game. True, there are much worse games out there, but this game isn't too far behind.

So, if you have an urge to experience Iron Man, rent the DVD, at least then you'll get some pleasure from it and you can pretend you're playing a super advanced game at least. My final thought for this game...Flush It!, because that is exactly what this game truly is.